# QQQ vs SPY

Invesco QQQ Trust against SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.

Canonical page: https://tickerinside.com/compare/qqq-vs-spy/
Prices through 2026-09-04. QQQ holdings as published 2026-09-05, SPY 2026-09-03.
Licence: CC BY 4.0, attribution to TickerInside.

## The short answer

SPY contains 95.1% of QQQ by weight and QQQ contains 54.1% of SPY. Trading in both is deep enough that the choice for a trader is about the index, and the index difference is the 417 companies listed outside the Nasdaq.

## Key figures

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Holdings overlap by weight | 54.0% |
| Companies held by both | 87 |
| Share of QQQ held in common | 95.1% |
| Share of SPY held in common | 54.1% |
| Correlation of weekly returns, 3 years | 0.95 |
| Cost per year | QQQ 0.18%, SPY 0.09% |
| Return, 3 years | QQQ 96.3%, SPY 79.4% |
| Worst fall, 3 years | QQQ -21.3%, SPY -16.9% |
| Volatility, annualised | QQQ 19.5%, SPY 14.4% |
| Positions | QQQ 101, SPY 504 |

## Analysis

### The two most traded funds are not two versions of one index

SPY holds the S&P 500, 504 positions chosen by a committee across every exchange. QQQ holds the hundred largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq, 101 positions chosen by listing venue. That produces 87 companies in both and an overlap of 54.0%** of weight, with the largest shared names, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, weighing more in QQQ than in SPY.

### Where the 46.0% that is not shared comes from

Only 4.9% of QQQ's weight sits outside SPY, in 14 companies that are mostly foreign listings on the Nasdaq such as Shopify, Arm, MercadoLibre and PDD. The other direction is where the difference lives: 417 companies, 45.9%** of SPY, are in the S&P 500 and not in QQQ. JPMorgan, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Johnson & Johnson, Visa and Mastercard head that list, and none of them is listed on the Nasdaq.

### Cost, and what the concentration did

QQQ charges 0.18% a year and SPY 0.09%, so QQQ costs $9 more per $10,000 held. With 46.8% of its weight in ten companies against 38.1% for SPY, QQQ returned 96.3% over three years against 79.4%, fell -21.3% at its worst against -16.9%, and carried 19.5% volatility against 14.4%. SPY yields 0.98% against 0.42% for QQQ.

### Holding both

Weekly returns correlated at 0.95 over three years and 0.95 over five, so the pair moves as one market most weeks. What a second ticker changes is weight, not membership: the same 87 companies get counted twice, and the rest of the S&P 500 is diluted rather than removed.

## Largest positions held by both

| Ticker | Company | In QQQ | In SPY | Counted as overlap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NVDA | NVIDIA Corp | 8.85% | 8.29% | 8.29% |
| AAPL | Apple Inc | 7.46% | 7.22% | 7.22% |
| MSFT | Microsoft Corp | 5.91% | 5.68% | 5.68% |
| AMZN | Amazon.com Inc | 4.42% | 3.8% | 3.8% |
| GOOGL | Alphabet Inc | 3.13% | 3.01% | 3.01% |
| AVGO | Broadcom Inc | 2.69% | 2.53% | 2.53% |
| GOOG | Alphabet Inc | 2.91% | 2.4% | 2.4% |
| META | Meta Platforms Inc | 2.9% | 2.01% | 2.01% |
| MU | Micron Technology Inc | 5.03% | 1.62% | 1.62% |
| TSLA | Tesla Inc | 2.81% | 1.59% | 1.59% |
| AMD | Advanced Micro Devices Inc | 3.41% | 1.11% | 1.11% |
| WMT | Walmart Inc | 2.3% | 0.71% | 0.71% |
| INTC | Intel Corp | 2.11% | 0.68% | 0.68% |
| CSCO | Cisco Systems Inc | 1.89% | 0.64% | 0.64% |
| PLTR | Palantir Technologies Inc | 1.75% | 0.63% | 0.63% |

## Covariance and correlation

Covariance is annualised and expressed in percent squared, so the diagonal is each fund's variance. Dividing the off-diagonal by the two volatilities returns the correlation.

| | QQQ | SPY |
| --- | --- | --- |
| QQQ | 380 | 267.0 |
| SPY | 267.0 | 207 |

Correlation over 1, 3 and 5 years: 0.94, 0.95, 0.95.

## Method

How every figure is produced: https://tickerinside.com/how-the-numbers-are-produced/
Machine readable version of this comparison: https://tickerinside.com/api/v1/compare/qqq-vs-spy.json